White Flag
by Miyamashi
Summary: The Prologue to Business As Usual, in Reno's point of view, taking place after Weapon's attack on Midgar. RenoXRufus or Runo. Yaoi, Violence, Language.


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Miya's Note: This is _White Flag_, the short excerpt that started my personal RenoXRufus obsession (meaning that, if you don't approve of relationships of a homosexual nature, don't read it), but revamped. For those of you who read the original (which can still by found at my DeviantART account at miyamashi . deviantart . com, minus the spaces) This version is about the same as the old in meaning, atmosphere, and purpose, but completely different literarily. There is some added material that I think ties it in better with BAU, and it's a hell of a lot deeper through-and-through.

This is the end of BAU, for those of you who are fans of that one, too. Nevertheless, it is made to be read first. I WANT you to know how it ends. That makes it a very different reading experience.

Disclaimer: Reno and Rufus are not mine, but Squenix's, though I do feel that I've gotten to know them and given them something of my own. The characters themselves may not be mine, but this interpretation of them is.

White Flag

By Miyamashi

It's been months. How many, I don't know, because I've kind of lost track of the time again. It's been months, but I still find myself asking the same question I used to before it happened.

"What is it exactly that defines love?"

This, to most people I know--especially in my line of work--wouldn't be a very, let's say "manly" question to ask. And, believe you me, it wouldn't have been one I would have if it weren't for my unfortunate circumstance. I would say that I thought that I was in love, but I'd be lying. No, I didn't think it. It was more like I felt it.

And I had to have felt it. I couldn't think it and I couldn't know it, because I'm still not quite sure of what it means.

People who were familiar with my situation used to wonder how I managed to get myself into it, and I used to wonder, too. How, I don't know. But it can happen, and it did, despite the fact that I told myself it was impossible, Rude told me it was impossible, and Tseng did, too. _He_ seemed to be the only one who didn't think it was that odd. But he was just weird that way, and I guess that's why he was the one and only exception to my own rules. Because I just didn't like guys. It just didn't happen.

And then it did.

One thing I can do, is I _can_ tell you what kind of a man Rufus was. He was one of those people who had a strange kind of beauty that you only find in people who don't want it. It wasn't that he didn't use it to his advantage. No, he definitely did, since it gave him a significant edge over his fat, bastard father, at least when it came to the masses. That's not to say that he wasn't a little vain, either, because he was. He was meticulous, almost to the point of being obsessive-compulsive about how he looked. That was the only way he could have worn so much damn white. But he hated how it made people underestimate him, although that was something else he learned to use against his enemies, and he had a lot of those.

He prided himself on his enemies, and how they didn't stand a chance against him. He was a ruthless son of a bitch, and he knew it just as well as he knew he was a pretty boy.

As far as being attracted to me, he just was. He didn't love that I was a guy, and he didn't hate it. He just didn't care. I had never met anyone who just didn't _care_. It was odd, but it was kind of a refreshing thing, to find someone who felt like it didn't matter, just because it_ didn't_. As far as he was concerned, gender was just another barrier he could break down. And he did, just like he tore down everything else that ever stood in his way.

He was strong, too. He didn't look it, but he could take down a man with his bare hands. But it wasn't really _him_ giving him all of that physical strength. But that's not something to talk about now. That doesn't matter, because no matter how strong he may have been, it just wasn't strong enough to save him from the attack.

There wasn't enough strength in the world to do that.

But it was all him that was strong in his beliefs and his stubbornness. Because of that, as long as we were together, we weren't two men who slept together, we were just two people who made each other feel like we meant something. It wasn't necessarily a good feeling, but it was a feeling, and that's what mattered.

He was a strange man, Rufus Shinra. He was a messiah to some and an abomination to others. He was feared and worshipped like a god. Even after his tower in the sky was demolished and his body forgotten, there's something about him that stayed in Midgar, in the way people move and think and feel, including me. He was a martyr in his own right.

But it was Rufus the man, and not Rufus the god that I knew. And I knew him at his most human moments, from the times when he wanted to die to the moment I actually found him dead.

Yeah, I found him. Me, Reno Kiribani, who, unlike him, was known to most as less than a man, not more. I guess that's what made us a different kind of pair. We made each other human, where everybody else had failed. And I had found him at the moment that proved his mortality once and for all.

I was at the bottom looking up, and he was at the top looking down. I was at the bottom, and I couldn't do a damn thing as I watched the beams of light destroy the top floors of the Shinra building. I couldn't do anything as those fucking beams destroyed the god, the man, and my life.

It felt like Weapon had shot me, too.

And I just started running. It was like it had always been with us. It was just me, and him, and a blur of memories and thoughts and feelings where the world should have been.

It wasn't until Rude tackled me to the ground that I actually realized where I was. I had dropped down into the underground transit system (or under-plate, since the real ground, the one under the slums, was almost 80 feet beneath me) almost out of muscle memory from my many trips into and around Midgar.

After all, it was the fastest way back home; back to the bowels of Shinra Inc. and to its ruler.

I was screaming by then for Rude to let me go. He had to cover my mouth so that I would shut up. Elena was wigging out, and she was screeching almost as loud as I was. I don't blame her. She had no idea why I'd just run away. She had no idea about me and Rufus. I had made sure of that, for his sake more than mine.

"Stop, Reno," Rude had told me, as calm and emotionless as ever. "Think about what you're doing here. There's no way anyone could have survived that explosion. This is just gonna hurt you."

He let my mouth go and stood from the ground. I heard him brushing off his suit. I stayed there for a while, my breathing heavy from the run and the old smoke in my lungs. I didn't stand until I heard a new set of footsteps echoing down the corridor. The three of us ran toward them like we were trained to do--like a gang or a posse. It was those AVALANCHE freaks, the spikey-headed kid in the forefront.

I was still sane enough to notice the Ancient chick wasn't with them this time.

They asked us if we wanted to fight. I wasn't happy about the idea, but Elena was. She almost literally jumped at the prospect of getting to test her skills against the people that every paper in Midgar considered our "most dangerous threat". Rude, as always, was indifferent, though he dared a look in my direction, like he was asking me how I felt about the whole situation. I pulled out my electro-mag rod--which Rufus had given me, I thought to myself for a fleeting moment before I pushed the memory aside--and stood prepared to battle.

It was the perfect chance to run again. I took a few hits and beat it in the direction of the Shinra building, leaving my best friend and newest comrade behind. I think that Rude kept the fight going so that I could get away.

I guess that's a kind of love, too, but different somehow. Rude and I are brothers, and Elena's like a sister to me. We're friends, we're family, but we're not like me and Rufus were.

I still don't know what set him apart from them.

When I finally got close enough to see the Shinra Building, I felt like I was sinking. There were ruins where the once-proud tower had stood. Still, I could delude myself into thinking that he was alright. I could think to myself that he was standing by the mostly-still-intact bottom half of his family's age-old fortress, that same triumphant grin on his face that he wore when he had won a fight against the world.

I could see it because that's what I'd always believed. With the rest of the planet, I had thought that Rufus was invincible.

It was when I got closer to the white beacon I knew to be his suit when I realized all over again that he was just another human being.

He was speared through the back, hanging limply in midair, by a thick beam sticking up from the rest of the debris. It was sharp on the end, like a spike, and had cut through his body easily as a knife. His blood marked the ruins and that once-pure white suit. It was unreal to see him there, staring at the foggy Mako sky with those ice-eyes of his, blood splattered all around him like absurd red paint. He was burnt from the blast, his limbs twisted from the force of that unimaginable seventy-story fall.

He was dead.

But the world has the same kind of fucked-up sense of humor he had in life. It looked like something he had thought up himself, the way everything--burns, rips, blood, and dirt--had missed one large piece of the long part of his undercoat. Where the rest of him and everything around him was mutilated in an almost awe-inspiring portrait of mortality, that one part of his clothing was as white and pure as it had been when he had first put it on. It rustled slightly in a rare breeze that you didn't often see in Midgar.

Live in beauty, die in beauty. It was all I could have expected from him at that moment. I couldn't help but be amazed at how strangely appropriate it seemed, despite the pain that threatened to kill me, too.

And in his death, just as he would have wanted, the terrible Shinra legacy had ended, going down in flames with its unwilling, destined ruler.

Rufus had become Shinra's white flag.


End file.
